


like an open wound

by demonsorceress



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: CW: alcohol, CW: mentions of character death, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, established jemma x bobbi with a bit of skye x lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 03:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2717228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonsorceress/pseuds/demonsorceress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Missing you comes in waves. Tonight I am drowning."<br/>The loss they've felt since Izzy has been gone is particularly painful in this special day, and Bobbi and Lance share some happy memories of their friend with Jemma and Skye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like an open wound

**Author's Note:**

> A small PSA, I just changed my username from jemsimmons to tinyscientist. :)

The clock tells Jemma it’s not even 7AM, and the alarm hasn’t gone off yet. Normally, Jemma would snuggle up with Bobbi and go back to sleep, but today she finds herself alone in the bed.

Jemma tries to be optimistic at first. Maybe Bobbi simply couldn't sleep and decided to start her day earlier than usual. Jemma shrugs it off and considers trying to sleep again.

Less than five minutes later, she's up and changing from her pajamas to a proper outfit. She's not sleeping again now so shortly before the alarm goes off, so she might as well get up already and go look for Bobbi.

After a while walking around the base and searching the places Bobbi could be, she starts asking the agents that are already working if they’ve seen Agent Morse. Finally, a guy tells Jemma he saw Bobbi going into the shooting range almost an hour ago.

At least for as long as Jemma and Bobbi have been together, it’s unusual for Bobbi to need shooting practice in the first place, let alone this early. That’s enough reason for Jemma to head straight to the shooting range after her.

Bobbi is there indeed, but not practicing shooting. Instead, Jemma finds her holding two throwing knives. In the end of the shooting range, she set up a target using a large wood board and one of those paper targets for shooting practice. Rather than bullet holes, this one is covered in thin, linear cuts from the knives, most of them close to or right in the center. There’s one knife stuck in the wood right over one of the tentacles of the Hydra logo in the silhouette of a soldier.

Jemma stays close to the entrance for a moment, watching as Bobbi skillfully hits the target with the last two knives on her hands. She proceedes to cross the range to pull her three knives out of the target. That’s when Jemma walks in and makes her presence known with a shy “hey”.

Bobbi whirls around, surprised to see Jemma there. She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

The sudden knife throwing should’ve been enough of a clue as to what’s going on, but not for Jemma.

* * *

Jemma and Bobbi don’t spend much time together throughout the day, but when they do, Jemma notices that Bobbi is… strangely quiet. Sad, even.

Bobbi spends some time in the lab with her girlfriend, but rather than either giving Jemma a hand with her work or tempting her with kisses on the back of her neck, like she usually does when she’s there, this time she just sits silently, seeming distracted as she stares into nowhere.

When Jemma asks if she’s okay, her response is a vague “yeah”. Not long after that, she leaves the lab. Jemma wants to go after her and try to find out what’s wrong, but she has work to do.

Fresh out of the shower after her training with May, Skye waltz into the lab and greets Jemma. “Coulson is asking how’s it going with those samples.”

“I’m just done here, actually.” Jemma takes off her goggles and throws her disposable gloves in the trash. “I made progress, though not as much as I would’ve wished. My report has already been sent to Coulson.”

“Okay, great,” Skye says.

They head out of the lab together and talk for a bit before Jemma can’t help but ask, “Have you seen Bobbi around?”

“No, why?”

Jemma sighs. “She’s been acting rather strange today, is all.”

Skye raises her eyebrows. “Oh, I know why.” She says, much to Jemma’s surprise. Skye casts her eyes down and explains, “Today would’ve been Isabelle Hartley’s birthday.”

Jemma gasps.

Isabelle Hartley was one of Bobbi’s closest friends, tragically killed in a car accident along with Idaho, the other mercenary she brought to the team along with Lance Hunter, who is now the only one left out of the three of them.

Jemma was still infiltrated in Hydra when the trio joined the team for a while, and so was Bobbi. She hadn’t seen Isabelle since months before her undercover mission as Hydra’s Security Chief. Bobbi doesn’t talk much about her, but when she does, her words are laced with a deep sadness that leave no doubt as to how much she appreciated their friendship, and how painfully she misses her.

Jemma feels a tug in her chest. She should’ve known.

The knife throwing and mournful silence should’ve been enough for Jemma to understand, or at least consider the possibility. But the thought didn’t even cross her mind. It would’ve been Isabelle’s birthday today.

“Oh, gosh, how could I not know that?” Jemma buries her face in one hand, and feels Skye’s hand on her shoulder.

“You couldn’t have,” Skye assures her. “I only know because I was an _idiot_ and went to ask Lance if he was upset ‘cause he’d lost on his soccer videogame yet again, and he snapped and told me to take a look at Isabelle’s file.”

Skye and Lance seem to be stuck in that early stage of friendship where they're too busy bickering to admit they care about each other.

“I should find Bobbi,” Jemma says.

Skye follows Jemma to the door of Bobbi’s room, and when she knocks, no one answers.

Jemma sighs in frustration, and Skye offers a suggestion. “Look, if I know Lance, he’s drinking somewhere. Do you think Bobbi could be with him?”

They end up finding the two in the closest thing they have to a bar in the base: the minibar inside the Bus. That lounge still makes Skye and Jemma nostalgic—the amount of nights they spent drinking away their problems there, playing Scrabble, before Hydra happened and everything went to hell. There’s a nearly empty six-pack in front of Lance, and he looks even worse than Bobbi. They’re both in dead silence.

Skye and Jemma stay behind, questioning whether they should join their friends or not. They’re mourning the death of a close friend that Skye barely knew and Jemma didn’t even meet. They want so desperately to do something, though.

Jemma wants to offer her girlfriend her support, and Skye… Skye keeps trying to convince Lance that Isabelle and Idaho’s deaths weren’t his fault, but he still blames himself. No matter what anyone tells him, about how he did everything he could to try to save his friend, and how he couldn’t have known the car accident was going to happen, he blames himself and Skye knows it.

Bobbi may have known Isabelle better and for a longer time, but Lance was the one who saw her dead body right in front of his eyes, short after he used one of her own knives to cut off her arm in an attempt to save her. And he remembers every second.

Eventually, Bobbi spots Skye and Jemma and says, “Hey. Something wrong?”

Jemma shakes her head, and her expression is enough to tell Bobbi that she knows. She then gestures for both of them to come closer.

Jemma steps toward her girlfriend and Skye awkwardly follows after, taking a seat on the stool next to Lance. She pats his back fondly and mutters a "hey" to him.

Jemma sits next to Bobbi and leans closer to her, whispering into her ear, "I'm so sorry for your loss."

Bobbi gives her a grateful smile, but Jemma still can't help but feel like she doesn't fit there in that moment.

"Listen, if you want to be alone, I get it, I'll leave-"

"No," Bobbi cuts her off softly, her voice low like she's too emotionally exhausted to put more effort into speaking. "Stay."

She slides an arm around Jemma's shoulders; usually this would be when Jemma leans in to rest her head on Bobbi's shoulders, but this time, Bobbi is the one who needs that.

It doesn't fit as well as the opposite because their height difference is gigantic, but suddenly, with Bobbi's head on her shoulder, Jemma doesn't feel so small anymore, like she always does—the small spoon, the one that has to stand on her tiptoes to kiss her tall girlfriend, the "tiny scientist, as Bobbi likes to say. She feels like, right now, she needs to be the bigger one. It's so rare for her to see Bobbi this vulnerable and sad that she barely knows how to react.

She rubs her hand up and down Bobbi's arm, and Bobbi just stays there, laying on Jemma's shoulder, eyes closed. They all stay quiet for a while, Skye slowly sipping from the last beer left in the six-pack, Lance finishing his.

Suddenly, Lance lifts his head and turns to Jemma. "Did you ever meet Izzy?"

That could've sounded like he was questioning her reason for even being there, but it was actually just a curious question, as if he's trying to strike up conversation.

"No," Jemma answers. Bobbi sits straight beside her.

"Too bad," Lance remarks apathetically, drinking the rest of the beer in his hand and setting the empty bottle down on the counter.

Bobbi keeps talking to prevent that silence from settling in again. “She was a force to be reckoned with,” she blurts out thoughtfully. “You know, she could drink us all under the table.”

That seems to light up Lance’s mood a little bit. “That’s not true,” he protests.

“Oh _please_ ,” Bobbi teases. “Even Jemma is less of a lightweight than you.”

In another situation Jemma would have defended herself, but now she's still too wary with her words, like stepping on eggshells. She's never seen Lance like this—he's always covering up his feelings with snarky remarks here and there to avoid showing emotions. It feels strange to see sadness so clear in his expression, and Jemma can't help but be unsure as to how to act around him in this moment.

"On Izzy's birthday last year," Bobbi starts with a small smile, but enough to assure them it's a happy memory, "we all went out to a bar. Izzy got so drunk that she called a toast for herself. Standing on a stool, she asked the entire bar to make a toast for her, and then sing happy birthday to her."

Lance lets out a soft chuckle; it's not much but it's something. And then the smile fades away as he remembers the many nights he spent in bars with Izzy and Idaho, constantly mocking Idaho's terrible pick-up lines an trying to hook Izzy up with women he thought were her type. (They almost never were.) A painful feeling rips through his chest as he thinks that when he wanted to drink away his sorrows, at least he had Izzy with him.

It's too bad Izzy can't be there to lift his spirits when he's grieving.

"Did everyone do it? I mean, sing her happy birthday?" Skye asks, encouraging Bobbi to continue the story.

"Not everyone, but a lot of people did," Bobbi replies. "She was so happy. And drunk."

She looks at Lance expectantly, as if waiting for him to add something to the story, but he's tipsy and doesn't feel like talking much.

"I remember that we all got her knives for her birthday," Bobbi says after another moment of silence. "Very creative."

Jemma doesn't know much about Isabelle, but Bobbi has mentioned before that her friend was more into knives than firearms—or battle staves like Bobbi's—, and a very skilled knife thrower. "She must have loved it," Jemma says.

“Not so much,” Lance replies, “when I gave her a kitchen knife as a joke.”

Skye rolls her eyes, not surprised at all. So does Bobbi, and Jemma just looks amused.

“Way to be thankful to her for teaching you how to throw knives decently,” Bobbi quips.

Lance’s throat grows tight but he swallows and says, “She simply helped me improve my abilities.”

Skye scoffs at his smugness.

“Just to give you an idea,” Bobbi says, looking at Skye. “This one time we were playing knife- Like darts, but with knives and a target on the wall. And Hunter would manage to hit _anything_ but the target.”

Lance laughs, and the two of them share with Skye and Jemma a few more funny stories involving Isabelle before the heavy silence inevitably reigns once again. Jemma keeps holding Bobbi’s hand, softly tracing circles on her skin.

Not long after they stop talking, Lance crosses his arms over the counter and rests his forehead against them with a sigh, closing his eyes.

Skye exhales deeply, helpless, wishing she could do anything besides letting him grieve. So she reaches for his shoulder and rubs her fingers against his skin softly, and hopes it’s something.

Jemma and Bobbi cast their eyes down, only looking up again when Bobbi suddenly lifts her beer. “We should make a toast,” she says softly.

Lance and Skye lift their bottles too, even though Lance’s barely has any beer left by now. Jemma just tightens her grip on Bobbi’s hand.

“To Izzy.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me if you cried. I cried writing this, it's only fair I get something in return, and it's so satisfying when people cry reading a fic I wrote. And if you didn't cry but liked the fic, tell me whatsoever. I'm a sensitive writer who needs constant reassurance.


End file.
